Identity politics marks our age, but what if someone chooses an identity because they ‘feel’ that they belong to a particular group?
Sometimes such identification can lead to the support of the liberal world. For example, not too many would decry Catyln Jenner’s desire to identify as female even though she was born to a different gender.
This is not the case with Rachel Dolezal, the Spokane resident who had been an NCAAP leader up until the point she was ‘outed’ as white.
Much anger and derision were showered on her by Conservative whites and African American’s sick of what they saw as another crass example of cultural appropriation.
‘The Rachel Divide’ attempts to tell the story from the inside, interviewing and tracking Dolezal as she moves around her hometown with her two black sons.

Naturally, there is a little more to the story than the meets the eye. We learn that Dolezal was exposed just before she was due to give evidence against her brother, who had been accused of sexual abuse of both her and her adopted sister.
Her genetic parents turn out to be strict Christians from whom she felt alienated, who then adopted four black children to which she became attached.
This strange history goes some way to explaining why she tried to pass herself as something other than she was … or is it enough to feel it is ‘right’ for you? Are you simply what you affect to be? Plenty of people will identify with certain European cultures, for example learning French and going to live in the country, saying they ‘feel’ French.
Of course, doing this doesn’t involve racial identity politics that are strewn with shattered lives and the violence of the last 200 years.
People of color don’t get to pick their fate. They have to identify even when sometimes they’d rather not.
Also, plenty of people have to chosen support African Americans in their struggle for equality which begs the question why didn’t Rachel Dolezal do just that? Why the need to ‘be’ African American? There is something peculiarly American about the whole story. I recently saw a play called Harry Clarke which featured a man played by Billy Crudup who passed himself off as British even though he came from Indianapolis. It immediately reminded me of Dolezal’s story which is perhaps most of all about the search for belonging and acceptance and above all to know who we are.
The fact is that in both instances the choices made only took them further away from who they are is at the heart of what makes their stories strangely compelling but ultimately tragic.

A recent show at MoMA featured the work of iconic photographer Stephen Shore. It showed the breadth of his work, but still the images I most associates with him are those taken in the 1970’s and featured in the book ‘Uncommon Places’ a kind of greatest hits collection of his work. Many document an old America that has mostly vanished with views of empty small-town streets and parking lots full of American made cars.

In these pictures, you can see the influence of on Robert Frank’s classic ‘The Americans’ a journey through 1950’s America with a forward, appropriately enough, by beat writer Jack Kerouac. In Shore’s work color has replaced the stark black and white of Frank and those images that documented social upheaval and strife in the latter’s work are missing.

Instead, Shore chooses to document those forgotten and visually unheralded blocks that feel almost like Edward Hopper paintings in their stark loneliness.

]]>https://ngpopgun.wordpress.com/2018/05/10/uncommon/feed/0Screen shot 2011-08-18 at 3.06.41 PMworldofnick320185706f88ab320f3be631d408432cf0bba2712_362Shore_A_Presidio_TX-Customxshore2.jpg.pagespeed.ic_.MAiNtJFvBG-1024x812016-stephen-shore-theredliststephen_shore_photogrvphy_magazine_18-1024x614_cSeydou Keitahttps://ngpopgun.wordpress.com/2018/05/08/seydou-keita/
https://ngpopgun.wordpress.com/2018/05/08/seydou-keita/#respondTue, 08 May 2018 17:53:42 +0000http://ngpopgun.wordpress.com/?p=6187Malian photographer Seydou Keita took these pictures in the 1950’s. They feature middle-class citizens of Mali and show a beautiful eye for composition

A young teen, Charley, lives in Oregon with his dad, a man who seems unable to keep a job or sustain a relationship.

Charley gets a job, training racehorses and becomes particularly attached to one called ‘Lean on Pete’, who it seems is heading for the knackers yard owing to his poor form.

When his father gets into a fight that ends with him being thrown through the window of their home things quickly escalate into a full-blown tragedy that leaves Charley homeless and clinging on to the faint hope that he can live with his Aunt who is somewhere out in Wyoming though he’s not sure where.

Charlie and the broken racehorse then set out on an epic journey across the western states as he attempts to find his Aunt and get the home he has never really known.

Along the way, he meets violence and pain as he comes across the cruel and broken who have little choice but to put up with the misery of their lives.

One woman, hugely overweight and continuously abused by her father, when questioned by Charley as to why she puts up with it makes the point that sometimes in life we don’t have any other options, and there is no other place for us to go.

All it takes is one act of kindness to reverse the fortunes of a person in need, and this is what the film searches, almost yearns for,

Even when we think there may be a happy ending we can not but look back on what we have seen and realize that at any moment this potential happiness may be taken away by fate and the simple lack of love in this world.

Part road movie, part coming of age story, the film cleverly subverts the expectations of either to create something that lives in the memory, and in the heart.

The plot is simple. A transgender woman, Marina, goes out with an older man who suddenly takes ill and dies. The death is both a tragic end to a beautiful relationship and the beginning of a spiral of hate and vindictiveness given to the woman by society at large.

For this film to work, you have to like the woman at the heart of the story. This involves confronting our deep prejudices, which we would never express in polite liberal society. Let’s face it how many of us have transgender or transsexual friends? I’m guessing not many. Partly this is due to the relative rarity of such individuals but also due to our preconceptions.

The reason ‘A Fantastic Woman’ succeeds so well is that we do very much like the principal character, which is entirely sympathetic throughout the film, owing to the filmmaker’s choices and the performance of Daniela Vega.

Rather than present Marina’s life as massively different than our own the story concentrates on the everydayness of her existence. She still has to go to work and cope with living in the way we all do. The things that indeed make her life different is our idea of her and how that makes us feel. From the spurned ex-wife to the violent and moronic cousins of the deceased, people can’t divorce their fears from the reality of the woman they see in front of them.

The film never becomes too over the top limiting the abuse mainly to harassment and verbal insult, but that is enough to make a life for her harder than it need be.

More than just a film about a transgender person, ‘A Fantastic Woman’ shows how a practical intelligence can overcome the stupid ideas that the world throws at us.

Donald Glover them man otherwise known as Childish Gambino has produced the video of the moment at a time when hardly anyone watches videos anymore. His current creation for the song ‘This is America’ scored millions of hits in a matter of hours.

It may be called , but the FX series is really about the life and death of his murderer Andrew Cunanan, a boy/man who longs for the trappings of success without doing the work needed to achieve it.

Kept by a string of elderly male lovers in the style to which undoubtedly believes he was born too, Cunanan becomes a poster child for the eighties decade in which he grew up, the world of conspicuous consummation as a symbol of ‘being loved.’ At one point Cunanan asks a friend to give him an expensive gift in front a large crowd so, in his words, they can see that he is loved. What is sadder still is that Cunanan has brought the gift himself.

Weaved into Cunanan’s killing spree is the shadowy underworld of the eighties and nineties gay culture, which leaves all those involved open to ridicule, blackmail and violence and reminds us of exactly why there was a need for gay marriage. When Gianni Versace is murdered his lover is effectively left with no rights to anything, unlike a wife.

The series cleverly moves backward and forwards in time revealing with every episode more of what makes Cunanan the man he becomes until in episode eight, ‘Creator Destroyer,’ we finally meet his father, Filipino migrant driven by a desire to make it in the USA no matter who he hurts.
He works as a stockbroker swindling his clients to afford the lavish lifestyle that shows he is a winner and anyone who interferes with his fantasy like his long-suffering wife, feels the back of his hand. Here is a life based on delusion and it’s not hard to see from where Andrew Cunanan’s obsession with possessions stems.

During this episode, the series goes as far as to suggest that Andrew is sexually abused by his father. Though there is little evidence for this, it’s another way to explain the outbursts of violence that Andrew Cunanan had through his life.

In the end, as Andrew is finally hunted down while living appropriately enough, in a swanky beach house which he has broken into, we see a man alone. Deserted by his father, his friends and his dreams he is left to watch the Versace funeral on TV before he is finally surrounded and takes his own life.

Janelle Monae is the latest performer to take the mighty legacy of Prince and reuse it for her creative ends.
‘Make You Feel’ is an androgynous, Kiss-like anthem to the noble art of doing what you feel, accompanied by a vibrant video that feels like the arrival of spring.

]]>https://ngpopgun.wordpress.com/2018/04/03/show-me-the-monae/feed/023-janelle-monae.w710.h473worldofnickjanelle-monae-mainAnnihilationhttps://ngpopgun.wordpress.com/2018/03/18/annihilation/
https://ngpopgun.wordpress.com/2018/03/18/annihilation/#respondSun, 18 Mar 2018 23:33:27 +0000http://ngpopgun.wordpress.com/?p=6152Based on the first book of the much-praised Southern Reach trilogy, Annihilation is the new film from Alex Garland the screenwriter behind 28 Days Later and the director of Ex Machina.

I loved both these and Sunshine, another film written by Garland so I had high hopes of this new work.

The story is simple. A strange forcefield called the shimmer has appeared on a section of earth. Everything inside the shimmer is weirdly distorted. Strange genetic mutations and weird concepts of time abound. If past expeditions are anything to go by the shimmer is also a place in which to go violently mad. The latest force to enter features an all-female group of scientists led by Jennifer Jason Leigh and containing her hero Natalie Portman.

However, there is something very slightly lacking from this strange and intriguing work.

In two words I think that’s Natalie Portman. Now I love Natalie Portman. She’s excellent in Black Swan and a whole host of other films but in this, she seems miscast.

Unlike many viewers of the film I’ve actually read the first two books of Jeff Vandermeer’s trilogy and in the second the lead character is described as athletic, tall and lean with some Asain blood. Another way to see her is an experienced military person who can handle herself.

The diminutive Portman would seem about as far away from this description as you could get. Psychologically too she differs significantly. Instead of the closed-off loner of the book who is aware that she is slowly unraveling, we have the sensitive waif like Portman.

Plot-wise too the film veers significantly away from the source material with several elements vanishing completely. I think is fine if what replaces it feels sharper and more filmic but I’m not entirely convinced that it is.

One element completely missing from the film are series of biblical messages written in algae that seems to be alive, on the walls of a deep underground cave.

Then there is the performance of Jennifer Jason Leigh who plays a rather distant and depressed scientist in a distinct deadpan manner. She’s one of the very best actors around but I question this reading of the character on some level.

Yet for all this, I did like the film and probably at some point, I can see myself watching it again. It deals like Ex Machina with the idea of identity and what constitutes it, as well as the increasingly fractious relationship between man and his environment.

The story plays out in a strange beautifully art directed world in which our fears are never far behind us and offers some serious weirdness in the process but ultimately the powerful sci-fi classic I was hoping for doesn’t quite materialize